“Please don’t let them put me in a box.”
Elayne Sallemi wrote that line into her will at 27, years before she became a death doula. In this conversation she explains what she meant by it, and what nature-based death care looks like when she practices it as a green witch: not spells or ceremony, but a call back to nature, honoring earth, air, water and fire the way her ancestors did for thousands of years.
What Nature-Based Death Care Looks Like
The practice centers on a four-element altar (light, plant, stone, water) and on tending death the way an herbalist tends illness: with plants, ritual and attention, not machines and paperwork. It isn't a costume or an aesthetic. It's a living, ancestral practice.
Where It Comes From: The Strega Lineage
Elayne traces it to the strega, a word that simply means "the woman who knew things." Her family's herbal knowledge passed from grandmother to granddaughter in the kitchen, and she's clear that you don't need Italian heritage or a bloodline to practice what resonates with you. Her full piece on the Stregheria tradition goes deeper into where this comes from.
What Is in the Apothecary Bag
If someone you love is dying, this is the kit: lavender, salt, rosemary, rose petals and willow bark, carried into the dying space and used with intention, not decoration. The fuller piece on deathbed herbalism covers the history and the reasoning behind specific plants. All of it works beside hospice and medical care, never in place of it.
Why Mirrors Get Covered
Elayne covers mirrors in a room where someone is dying so a soul doesn't get "stuck." It's one piece of setting up a room for transition, alongside the herbs, the altar and the quiet.
What a Full Green Burial Looks Like
Washing the body in salt and herbs. A wicker basket or a tree pod instead of a sealed casket. A communal feast afterward for the departed and their ancestors. The complete guide to green burial covers how it works, how it compares to cremation, and whether it's legal where you live.
Where to Start
The full guide to nature-based and ancestral death care is here, and you can read more about Elayne's practice.
